I recently reviewed a power cable from Imperio, and was amazed at how much it improved my Mac’s performance. Here’s another item from that company which has made a difference to my wallet.

The $149 Imperio USB printer cable (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) is a directional USB cable, designed especially for printers. The directionality comes from the fact that the cabling is inserted in the sheathing in the optimal direction for electron flow. This directionality improves printer rastering, and reduces toner consumption.

Like the Imperio power cable, this cable has conductors of silver-coated, oxygen-free copper (OFC), a foam polyethylene dielectric, aluminum-Mylar shielding, and a PVC jacket, and its jacks are gold-plated. The silver ensures error-free data throughput, and the OFC is what cuts down on toner usage. I didn’t believe this would be possible, so I printed 10,000 pages full of text and images to test the cable. My current printer cartridges are rated at 5,000 copies, and I’ve often found cartridges to be capable of printing about 10% more than that, but this cable allowed me to print 8,471 pages before reaching an unacceptable level of quality. (The printing started getting a bit gray, which was when I judged it wasn’t good enough.)

At the current price of printer cartridges, you could save the cost of the cable relatively quickly; naturally, this depends on how much you print. Also, I only tried it with a black-and-white printer; if you use a color printer, Imperio says you’ll save even more.

Another great cable from Imperio, and one that every printer user should own.